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Talk:The Witch
I'm posting critiques as I read, so these are my first impressions of the story. The title alone makes it kind of hard to take seriously from the get-go. It sounds like the tentative title for a children's book. By the end of the first paragraph I already spotted something that could be fixed with the overall narrative: it's very dry and very dense. I think every sentence in that opening paragraph could be tightened up and/or even split into separate statements. Try reading it out loud and see what a mouthful it is. It might also inspire you to use snappier description in the process, like changing "he quickly concluded that the woman was probably not mentally present" to "the woman was obviously out to lunch." I have a feeling this criticism will apply to the story as a whole, so I won't point out every instance. Paragraph 2 I would split into three paragraphs, making Mrs. Wyttick's non-response its own separate line. I would try breaking off the dialogue more often in general, such as with the next paragraph. Dialogue always starts a new paragraph when the speaker changes; I don't think the case is any different here, even though Mrs. Wyttick isn't giving an audible response. It's usually a good idea to avoid walls of text in general anyway. Mrs. Wyttick herself is pretty vile, as I know she's supposed to be, but she never shuts up to the point where it seems like you're really trying too hard. I can't fathom the reason for all the things she described apart from trying to push the shock value envelope. As a result, I don't feel like I'm getting a story at all -- just masturbation. The segment seems to meander a lot and leaves me feeling like I was just looking through a gallery of gore and grossness with no real purpose. The segment ending is shrug-worthy, while I somehow get the sense that I'm supposed to be disturbed at the daughter implications. There are times when the dialogue loses me a little as well, like with the opening scene of the Fatso segment, which feels very expository and clumsy. I'm almost halfway through the story and I still don't have any real sense of dread, nor a reason why I should care about what's going on. If I hadn't been asked to critique, I would've bailed on this story already. The bit about Andrew killing himself...so were his "daughters" actually pets? It's extremely unclear, but I'm forced to guess that's the case, but so clumsily revealed I'm left simply not caring. The fact that this witch has kept Annabelle hidden for so long seems a bit of a stretch, so it's good that you kept the details of their search vague. On the other hand, there's the line about Evelyn never missing an opportunity for irony. Any detective will tell you that the easiest cases to solve are the ones where the criminal tried to get cute. They would've found Annabelle centuries ago because of Evelyn's cute little clues. “There’s something down there,” she said. “Some room, or something maybe.” '' ^ This line made me wince. Without the second segment in quotes, it's fine. ''Ian would have asked more, but he felt increasingly anxious. Show, don't tell! Let us see his anxiety manifest. I seriously think there would be more damage done by Annabelle in her monstrous state by the time they found her, given the fact that she's been missing since 1300. Half the country would be a quarry. I like the idea you present -- that this girl has been left down there for so long she's become a horrendous monster who nearly devours the protagonist -- but the execution is questionable. "That hole… it must have been made by something huge." This is already obvious to us. He was thankful that the woman, who had so clearly intended to feed him to the monstrous Annabelle, had been caught instead by her own trap. This is also obvious. Stating the fact is redundant and insults the reader's intelligence a little bit. Emphasize his thankful laughter instead. The only potentially scary moments in the whole story are the image of a pit covered in giant child-like drawings, and the resultant implications; and the giant head coming after Ian at the end. Everything else is a slow, meandering tale with no metaphor or concrete imagery and too much pointless emphasis on vileness. This reads like a first draft, and I would completely rewrite it from the ground up, taking a different approach. I haven't read your other works yet, and I can't say if it reflects your writing ability overall, but I get the impression that this is not one of your best. I wish I had more positive things to say about it, but there it is. If this were in my documents folder, it would be one of those stories I hadn't submitted anywhere because I'm still trying to think of a better way to tell it. One thing the story absolutely needs is a consistent protagonist with a personal reason for helping find Annabelle, and its absence is a major reason why I simply don't care what's going on. Instead of focusing on that, the story focuses on the grotesquery.